Both University at Buffalo researchers will receive $50,000 each
from the statewide SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund (TAF), which
cultivates innovation by speeding the commercialization of
high-impact SUNY inventions.

The projects are two of five selected from across the SUNY
system and announced last month by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, SUNY and
the SUNY Research Foundation. Here’s a closer look at the UB
projects.

A quicker, less redundant MRI scan

Medical imaging is the magic of looking inside the body without
making a cut. But it’s only as good as the picture you get
— the better the picture, the better the doctor can
understand what’s wrong with the patient.

One of the most widely used forms of medical imaging, magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) draws on physics, math and engineering,
says Leslie Ying, associate professor of biomedical engineering and
electrical engineering at the University at Buffalo.

“My role is computation,” she says. “I develop
innovative algorithms for MRI to make the image look
better.”

Better images are one thing, but Ying’s goal is to make it
happen more quickly. “The issue with images and speed
is that the patient has to stay in the scanner — motionless
— for a period of time,” she says. Sometimes that means
patients are asked to hold their breath. Other times, doctors
may want to look at an organ that can’t be stilled, such as a
beating heart.

Shorter times can also mean cost savings, Ying says. So her
challenge is, she says: “Can I significantly reduce this
period of time?”

Ying’s method uses a complicated algorithm to generate an
image from only a small portion of the data that is commonly
collected. That leaves another aspect of the challenge: Can
Ying’s method produce the same image quality as a longer
scan?

A lot of data in an image — whether an MRI scan or a
vacation photo — is redundant, Ying says. In digital
photography, people often compress image data with a file format
such as JPEG, thus allowing a smaller file size with minimal
quality loss.

Ying’s method is analogous to that, except that it
predicts image redundancies in a process she calls
compressed-sensing. “The idea is that we don’t acquire
all the information in the first place,” she says. “We
anticipate what compression will do and we only look for those
points.”

To do that without guessing, Ying’s method uses a model to
start with. Then she needs only a few data points to complete
the info. “Our technique improves the speed of
scanning,” Ying says, noting that her work has validated the
algorithms used in her methods and has demonstrated proof of
concept.

Now, with the TAF funding, Ying and her team will test her
method in an MRI scanner — “to see really how long it
takes. A few seconds? A minute? We need to be able to demonstrate
to vendors what we can offer.”

Ying will work with colleagues at GE Healthcare in Wisconsin
(Ying was formerly at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) to run
the tests.

“I have always been fascinated by what medical imaging can
do. I want to contribute directly to that,” Ying says.
“If an algorithm is too complicated it’s not going to
work. I try to find the balance and fill the gap between academic
work (mathematical theory) and industrial practice (medical
imaging).”

Scavenger resins recover expensive metal reagents

Building the drug molecules used in modern medicine involves
complex organic chemistry. Anything that makes chemical synthesis
faster, cheaper and purer is a boon.

A professor and associate chair of UB’s chemistry
department, Diver is developing technology called “metal
scavenger resins” that could do all three.

One very commonly used chemical reaction in making drugs is what
Diver calls a transition metal-catalyzed reaction. “Minute
quantities of metal allow us to make carbon-carbon bonds in unique
ways,” he says. Meaning there’s an opportunity to
create unique molecules and potentially new medicines, simply by
selecting the right catalyst for the application.

The transition metals include palladium, platinum and a handful
of others. Just a tiny bit of these elements can kick-start
— or catalyze — the desired chemical step in the
synthesis.

“It’s a very important topic in modern chemical
synthesis,” Diver says, because it makes the process much
more efficient. Older chemical processes included steps to
add functional groups to drive the next step in the synthesis and
then more steps later to remove those functional groups.
Transition metals do this in the blink of an eye and sidestep the
need for the extra steps. With them, chemists gain efficiency and
have greater control over the reaction.

But questions remain. “There are different states of
catalysts — some active, but most are not active,”
Diver says. “It’s hard to understand exactly how a
catalyst works. And I like to know how things work.”

Questions like this have driven Diver’s research since
1997 when he arrived at UB. Nine years ago, he teamed with Jerry
Keister, a UB chemistry professor, to piece together what’s
happening in transition metal-catalyzed reactions.

In order to analyze the step-by-step process of a chemical
reaction, Diver and Keister used an isocyanide to arrest the
catalytic reaction at different times. Isocyanide acts as a metal
scavenger, which is akin to sticking a magnet in a sack of nails;
it grabs all the metal in a solution and stops the reaction
cold.

Diver realized that industry would be interested in their
methods for a different reason — to remove metal from
synthetic reactions.

In pharmaceutical manufacturing, tiny amounts of precious and
expensive metal reagents add up to serious cost. Also,
pharmaceuticals are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration and purity is important for a medicine that’s
administered to millions of people. One of the regulations
specifies limits of metals allowed in drugs for human use.

Diver and his team then attached isocyanide — the metal
scavenger — to silica gel, which is like a very fine sand,
and to use this invention to rapidly quench a chemical reaction and
pull out the metal catalyst. The chemical reaction mixture could
simply be stirred with the material or allowed to pass through the
scavenging material, thereby removing the metal.

“It’s such a simple idea,” Diver says.
“It’s one of those things that once you find it, you
think, ‘Why hadn’t this been done
before?’”

With the TAF funding, Diver plans to rigorously evaluate how
well the technology pulls palladium — the most widely used
transition metal catalyst — from chemical reactions used by
the pharmaceutical industry. Next he hopes to test how it
works with different metal catalysts and whether he can tweak the
technology to work on larger volumes with better metal capture.

“We have plenty of interest from industry,” Diver
says. “Our potential partners include a few multinational
companies that are major stakeholders in the metal scavenging
market. Each has a separate niche and all have industrial clients
who look to them for help in selecting the right metal scavenger
for the job.”

Social Media / RSS

Get essential information and services—from the latest
news and Bulls headlines, to interactive maps, dining and
transportation information, and a lot more—anytime, anywhere,
right from your mobile device. Go mobile today!